Welcome to the Ghetto

“48 Balmforth… This is the address!” Conner’s mother exclaimed as they approached a late-century Victorian house.

Though the street was lined with similar aged homes, it stood out as not belonging in this neighborhood, which was now considered low income. Seemingly it is easier to turn a profit on a centenarian home when you rent it to newly divorced families like Conner’s rather than renovate it to modern standards.

It was the opposite of gentrification.

“This is our new home!” his mother shouted in hopes that her energy was contagious.

To be more accurate, the middle of the three floors would be their rented accommodations.

When their family was complete, they lived in middle-class neighborhoods mostly inhabited by people of the same pale complexion as Conner’s. Here, he was clearly the only boy with skin that lacked pigment.

They unloaded their U-Haul, with Conner carrying the majority of the weight up the flight of stairs. He was strong for his teens, likely from bearing the weight of his parents’ unhappiness for so many years. His younger sister didn’t seem as sensitive to his parents’ toxic energy, but as they liked to remind him, Conner was considered an “emotional” kid. Years later, adult therapy would reveal that while Conner was actually a predominantly logically driven person, he also had ADHD, and with that inevitable result of being conceived in chaos came superhero-level empathy and hypervigilance.

Those two qualities would be what made survival possible for Conner in these new foreign surroundings.

Although tired from the up and down of moving furniture into their second-story apartment, Conner was curious, though a bit fearful, of his new neighborhood. “Is this what they call a ghetto?” he wondered. He decided to explore.

He never had to consider his safety beyond the well-to-do-looking older couple in a Mercedes who often combed their old subdivision trying to convince unsuspecting children to approach the passenger side of their car to get “free” Super Bowl tickets. Conner figured out that something was off with them quickly and reported them to his parents, who stopped fighting long enough to call the police. They stopped coming around after that.

He decided his quick wit and intelligence would keep him safe now as well, despite being on the smaller side for his age.

There was a park at the end of the street that he wanted to check out. As he approached it, he could see the playground equipment was almost as old-looking as their new home. The only new paint on it was from the fresh markings of graffiti.

As he approached the entrance, he noticed a Hispanic boy with large, bouncy locks of curly hair that seemed to grow away from his head rather than cling to it the way Conner’s hair lay. The boy was similar in age, but somehow even shorter. Conner caught eyes with him, which caused the boy to immediately speed toward him. He had the brisk cadence of the middle-aged women who were speed walkers in his old community, but this had more bobbing from side to side.

The petite boy threw up his hand in a gesture that suggested a greeting, though one Conner wasn’t familiar with. He felt like an explorer who had landed on an unmarked island and was greeted by indigenous people who claimed the territory long before anyone pasty could. This was clearly a culture with rituals different from his own.

Conner threw up his hand in imitation. The Afro-haired pygmy grabbed the hand and gripped it with a surprising amount of strength for the boy’s size. It was clear he wasn’t going to let go. He pulled Conner in closely and down to his level. Pointing to the image of a flag on the sidewalk at the entrance of the park, he leaned in as if he was going to whisper in Conner’s ear, but never lowering his voice, he said, “Do you see this flag?”

With trepidation at their sudden intimacy, Conner nodded.

“That’s the Puerto Rican flag.”

“Cool,” was the only sound Conner could squeak out.

“Are you Boricua?”

“I don’t think so,” Conner managed to reply in his mix of fear and confusion.

“Well, are you from Puerto Rico?”

That was a question that Conner could definitively answer.

“I am not.”

“Well, this flag here means this park belongs to us Puerto Ricans.”

Conner studied the flag more closely, which wasn’t difficult considering he was almost in a headlock. He noticed it looked more like a permanent portrait than the ones his little sister made in street chalk on their old driveway.

“This flag means I can kill you if you come onto our turf.”

That didn’t seem like an approved law for any place that existed in an area of the same country where Conner had lived his whole life. Certainly, it wasn’t one taught in his civics classes. This was a foreign neighborhood, but were they allowed to have their own laws?

Not wanting to be a poor guest in a new habitat, Conner placated to his small peer’s demands. He wasn’t afraid of the boy as much as he was completely uncomfortable with these new cultural anomalies. The unknown was an anxiety that resembled panic.

The boy released Conner when he was satisfied by his level of submission. But the expectation was that Conner would turn around and go back to whichever dilapidated Gothic manor he emerged from.

Conner acquiesced, not sure if this ritual would end with a new friend or if, as he would recognize decades later in therapy and with experience, this was in fact a legitimate threat on his life.